After weeks of toing-and-froing over Kevin Rudd's health overhaul plan, Victorian Premier John Brumby has thrown a spanner in the works by releasing his own proposal.

The Prime Minister wants to assume 60 per cent control of public hospital funding, using one-third of the state's GST money.

Instead, Mr Brumby has proposed a 50-50 funding partnership.

But Mr Rudd's brief response is that he has a mandate for his own plan.

Mr Rudd's health and hospitals plan takes a leaf out of Victoria's book by setting up local health networks and shifting to activity-based funding, paying the efficient price of every public hospital service to public patients.

But from day one Mr Brumby was not a fan of Rudd's handiwork. Nor were his New South Wales and West Australian counterparts.

"And so today we're releasing this document, which has been the subject of enormous consultation in the Victorian community over recent weeks, and a document which I think makes a constructive contribution to the health debate in Australia," Mr Brumby said.

Mr Brumby has led the charge, voicing reservations ever since the Prime Minister unveiled his bid five weeks ago to assume majority control of all public hospital services.

His main gripe is no extra Commonwealth money for years.

Mr Brumby is keen to strike a deal at the COAG heads of government meeting in 11 days' time, but is adamant it has to be the right plan, proposing what he calls a simplified funding model.

"Firstly it proposes straight-forward financing," he said.

"That includes seeing the Commonwealth lift its effort to match that of our state and that of the states generally, and in lifting their effort, returning to the old partnership - the successful partnership of 50-50 funding.

"In Victoria's case, that would mean the Commonwealth lifting their contribution from 41 per cent of hospital funding to 50 per cent - that would represent an injection of funding of $1.2 billion per annum into our state.

"And under our proposals, the state and the state alone will be accountable to the public and to patients for patient care.

"Our plan also includes new national standards, through what will be an Australian health pact. Every man, woman and child would know exactly what standards are expected in our health system and hospitals and in other preventative programs."

His position of strength is that Victoria is widely regarded as having the nation's best performing healthcare system and as such forms the bedrock of the Rudd plan.

"And the bottom line is that in Victoria, our health system is now treating something like 700,000 more patients than it did a decade ago," Mr Brumby said.

Money carve-up

The Victorian leader does not think much of Mr Rudd wanting to give off one-third of state and territory GST revenue.

His plan would not yield any funds to the Commonwealth.

"A fair sharing of the costs of health and hospitals and that means an increase in Commonwealth funding, not just the recycling of GST payments," he said.

The Brumby counter-offensive has struck a chord with the Federal Opposition's health spokesman Peter Dutton.

"We want better patient outcomes so I think Kevin Rudd is after a better political outcome and I think John Brumby is highlighting that at the moment," Mr Dutton said.

"So the Prime Minister needs to explain whether or not this is just a pea and thimble trick with his so-called dominant funder.

"Whether or not it's going to involve extra bureaucrats, which I think John Brumby is worried about and why under the Prime Minister's plan is he proposing to pull the Victorian system back to level pegging with the New South Wales and Queensland system?

"Clearly those two systems are on their knees and why would we bring the rest of the states down to a lowest common denominator?"

Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon is not commenting. She met her New South Wales counterpart Carmel Tebbutt again today in a bid to convince the biggest state to sign up.

Mr Rudd is continuing his hospital visits, distributing millions for cancer services and spruiking his plan.

Behind the scenes the Federal Government talks as if it has health reform in the bag. Publicly, the Prime Minister is keeping up the tough talk.

"As Prime Minister I was elected with a mandate to deliver better health and hospital services for all Australians and I would just urge John [Brumby] to work with the Australian Government because state governments cannot afford to fund this system for the future," he said.

"The Australian Government must be the dominant funder for the future."

In Mr Brumby, Mr Rudd may have met his match.

"All of the modelling that we've done shows that there is just nothing in this for Victorian patients," Mr Brumby said.

"There's no extra money, all that's happening is a recycling of the GST and the additional effort again going forward is all state effort not Commonwealth effort.

"So I think you're going to find a number of states have great difficulty in agreeing to hand over their taxes to the Commonwealth, who just recycles it back with their label on it but it doesn't change healthcare."

Victorian Health Minister Daniel Andrews is just as determined.

"At the end of the day, health is complex enough without putting in place convoluted, incoherent and quite frankly impractical policies that are not funded and that will not treat additional patients and will not treat them faster," he said.